Friday, January 17, 2014

Homeless charities welcome cuts reversal

Homeless charities have welcomed the increase in homeless supports in Dublin City Council’s budget.

There had been concerns that almost €6 million would be cut to services for homeless people.

However, Dublin City Council has instead boosted funds by around €400,000 to frontline homeless services.

Responding to the news, Pat Doyle, CEO of the Peter McVerry Trust,
said “The news that Dublin City Council has voted to protect, and indeed
marginally increase, the annual budget for frontline homeless services
is good news, especially for the increasing number of people accessing
those services.”

The Trust also welcomed the announcement from the City Manager that
the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government is
also to provide a capital grant of €5 million to help renovate voids in
the city.

“These properties can play a small but crucial role in helping
alleviate the current housing shortages for those on waiting lists and
in homeless services,” according to Pat Doyle.

“Given
the constraints that local authorities and councillors face when
agreeing these budgets, I would like to thank the staff and councillors
who worked to find a way to protect homeless services in the budget for
2014.”

The budget for homeless services from Dublin City Council in 2014
will be €43.1 million an increase of €6.2 million on the draft budget
for 2014.

Focus Ireland stated on their Facebook page: “We just heard that the
majority group on Dublin City Council (FG Labour) is proposing to
reverse the cut to homeless services and add €300,000! Massive thanks to
all who supported this campaign! Every email made a big difference.”

The charity had been running a campaign encouraging people to email their local councillor with a request not to cut the budget.

The Peter Mc Verry Trust has stated that on average two individuals
exit homelessness in Dublin per day (2013), but there are six new
presentations of homelessness in Dublin per day (2013).

It is now
estimated that there are over 5,000 homeless people in Ireland.In December 2013, Focus Ireland said that the number of families
becoming homeless in Dublin has doubled in the last six months of the
year.

Around 16 families are losing their home every month in Dublin and five children a week being made homeless in the city.

At its annual conference during December, Focus Ireland said 9,237
people were homeless or at risk of losing their home in the first 11
months of the year, compared to 7,819 people during this same period in
the previous year.